Fettuccine Aisle
by baseballfan44
Summary: Robin and Don reflect on the events of late Season 5 while spending the day together. Takes place the day after the end of Angels and Devils. One-Shot.


A/N: Never again should I be allowed to watch the entire second half of season 5 of Numb3rs in one day again ever. What results from that is the following. This story is 100% pure unadulterated word vomit.

Spoilers: Season 5, mostly The Fifth Man and Angels and Devils. This story takes place the day after the end of Angels and Devils.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Even my car technically belongs to my parents, so I definitely do not own Numb3rs.

**Fettuccine Aisle**

She stopped, kicking the small wheel in frustration. Robin growled quietly under her breath. Don was chuckling softly over her shoulder.

"That's driving you insane," he observed. "You want me to get another cart with a better wheel that doesn't spin in circles as you shop?" He laughed again.

"No, don't be silly," said Robin. "We don't need to get another cart. But you can push." She stepped away, leaving Don to grab the handle of the shopping cart.

The couple continued on towards the produce section. Robin grabbed hold of Don's arm, relishing in his strong presence. It was hard to believe that it had been less than four weeks since Robin had been standing at the window of his hospital room with Alan, unsure of whether she'd ever get to spend time with him again—of whether they'd ever share these simple, uncomplicated moments together again. Robin would have given anything to be here in this grocery store with Don, spending one whole day worrying about absolutely nothing other than what they were going to make for dinner that night. And here they were, picking out a head of lettuce for a side salad. To Robin, it was nothing short of a miracle.

Don deposited the lettuce into the slightly defective shopping cart before turning towards her. He looked good, Robin noted. _Duh_, she reminded herself, _he was already back at work, on full duty. Of course he's going to look fine._ But he looked content; he actually looked really . . . well, carefree.

"Hey," he said, snapping Robin out of her thoughts. "You okay?"

_Am I okay?_ That question was not as simple as it seemed. Hmm. _Was_ she okay? Well, she had nearly lost the only man she had ever fallen in love with. She hated how cliché it was—but when Don had been stabbed and she was faced with the idea of never seeing him again, she realized that she didn't think she could be alone again. She couldn't lose this strong, wonderful, quiet, romantic, adorable man.

Robin swore to herself she'd never become this dependent on anyone. She would never let herself be reliant on someone to keep her going. And here was Don, who suddenly had total control of her emotional state. And Robin was frustrated with herself. For one, she couldn't believe she'd allowed herself to fall into such a typical, clichéd trap. Secondly, when she thought about it, she couldn't figure out why she was so mad at herself for falling in love.

The problem was, she had come to count on her and Don's future together. They weren't married, or even engaged, but Robin had somehow assumed that Don was the one she'd be with forever. Originally, that had scared her to death—enough to drive her to break up with Don for a year and a half. Now, the thought of it _not_ being that way scared her even more. And then Don was almost ripped from her, and she'd almost had to grieve for him. And he would have been gone, and a hole would have been placed in Robin and in all of Don's other loved ones.

Like yesterday, for example, could have been terrible. Amita had been kidnapped on Friday night, just after Don finished up the bank robbery case—his first case back on full duty. That night, all of Saturday, and a portion of yesterday had passed before she had been recovered, safe and sound. Nearly everyone had an active role in finding Amita—Charlie had figured out how to access the dummy site Amita set up and figure out what was going on; Alan had talked to the credit card company and in turn retrieved the most important clue; Larry and Edgerton had both found where the kidnappers had switched cars; David had forced Charlie to pay attention to the math; Colby, Liz, and Nikki doing most of the grunt work. Don had gotten Duryea's location out of that psychopath girl by figuring out exactly what Duryea was up to and using it against her. Don's part in the whole operation didn't seem to be much more or less important than anyone else's—all of them had found key pieces of information that had helped bring Amita home.

But if Don had died from the stabbing, how would Amita's kidnapping have gone? Everyone would still have been reeling and in shock from losing Don. The FBI agents were all professional, they would have acted with proficiency and clear-headedness no matter what, and maybe they'd have found her—but how fast? Although Robin hadn't been privy to the experience herself—she'd had a deposition in Portland—she knew from what she'd heard that Charlie had been enough of a basket case already. If Don hadn't been there to keep him grounded, how would he have functioned? Could he have figured out that Amita was attempting to communicate with him, or would his fog of despair have been too thick? And Alan would be grieving too heavily over the loss of his first-born son to be of much help to Charlie.

Robin knew she was totally over-thinking it. Don hadn't died; it hadn't happened. He had been there to help find Amita and now, everything was fine the next day. In answer to Don's question, things were okay.

"Yeah, I'm great," she responded. _Things are okay_, she reminded herself. "Why?"

"No reason. You just seem really quiet, like you're doing some really deep thinking." He smiled that smile at her—the one where all his teeth flashed bright and she melted into a puddle of goo. "It'll be okay. Salads don't have to be all that complicated, but if it'll make you feel better I can pick out the toppings myself."

Chuckling, she gave Don a light punch on the arm. "You're goofy."

"Thanks," Don's grin widened and Robin didn't even think that was possible. Before she could melt, his smile was snuffed out like a candle as Don grew serious. "But really, are you sure you're okay? You just seem . . . I don't know, sad I guess."

She wrapped an arm around his waist and they were walking again, Don pushing the cart. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just glad we both finally have a day off."

Don smiled a small, sad smile. "Yeah. We definitely needed it. It's been a crazy few weeks, hasn't it?"

"I'll say," Robin agreed. "I hope things can calm down a little around here now." _God knows how much we need that_. She leaned her head on his shoulder briefly, but took it off once she was aware of how awkward it was to walk and rest her head on something simultaneously. Instead, she wrapped her arm tighter around Don's waist. They walked through the produce section silently, picking out what to put in a salad. Robin loved how they each knew without speaking what they both liked on a salad.

They stopped in front of the salad dressings. Sometimes they switched up their salad dressing choices. "Do we want Italian or Ranch?" Don asked. His face spread into a grin again. "Or do we want to go with Bleu Cheese this time?"

Robin shook her head in mock irritation. Don knew how much she hated Bleu Cheese. "We'll get Italian," she decided.

"Oh, fine," Don sighed, also feigning annoyance. He grabbed a bottle of Italian dressing and handed it to Robin, and she put it in the cart and they were off again.

"Hey, when we're done here I'd like to stop by Charlie's," Don announced as he picked up a box of the fettuccine they both liked and tossed it into the cart. "I just want to check and see how he and Amita are doing, you know?"

"Sure," Robin responded. It would be good to see how they were doing. "Poor Charlie. I can't even imagine how he feels. He didn't just almost lose one person he's really close to, he almost lost two in the same month."

_Good going, Robin_, she berated herself. That un-thought out comment would probably not make Don feel any better, despite how obvious it was.

"Yeah," Don uttered softly. "I can't even imagine. Charlie was a mess Friday night. We thought Amita was a goner. We weren't positive, but it looked really bad for the first couple hours."

Robin stopped, turning to look at Don. "What do you mean? What happened?"

Don sighed. "I forgot—you were in Portland until last night. Well, Charlie had a description of the car that they kidnapped Amita in, and we found it pretty quick. We chased it for awhile, up into a parking garage. Colby and David had them pretty well blocked in, and before the kidnappers could stop they crashed their car into another parked car. Their car was full of bombs, so it exploded."

"Oh God," Robin breathed. She hadn't known this part.

"Yeah," Don agreed quietly. "Charlie and I were right behind Colby and David. There were only two bodies in the car, and including Amita there should have been three. They were badly burned—beyond recognition. So we thought from the start that she might not have been in the car, but we weren't positive, you know? But Charlie, he was convinced that she was."

"So he thought he already _had_ lost her," Robin mused. She sighed. At no point had she ever known deep in her gut that Don was lost to her for sure. It sounded like Charlie had known with no uncertainty that he had lost Amita - at least briefly. No matter that he turned out to be wrong, he still had spent some unknown amount of time facing a certain future without the person he loved most.

Don nodded. He was staring down at the shelf across the aisle, in the general direction of many boxes of pasta. He was silent for a moment, but finally he spoke.

"It was pretty tough to watch him," he admitted. "I mean he was just falling apart so fast. Like he couldn't even function. Even after we knew Amita wasn't in the car, Charlie was just so shaken up. I couldn't get him to think about anything."

Robin swallowed past the sudden lump forming in her throat. "I know what you mean," she said. "I mean, he didn't react quite like that when you were stabbed—he kept enough of a clear head to figure out who stabbed you and why. But even though I was at the hospital with you and your dad the whole time, I could tell that it was like he couldn't _stop_ working on your case. I mean, he didn't even change his clothes for like four days."

Don looked down at ground and started absently kicking the faulty grocery cart wheel with his toe. "That's more like how he was when our mom had cancer," he told her. Robin knew, Don had told her a little about the days leading up to his mother's death.

Robin nodded and reached for Don's hand on the grocery cart's handle. "Yeah. Well, anyways, I know where he's coming from." She turned her head up to look at his face.

Don met her gaze and stared at her for a moment, his eyes silently searching hers.

"When Amita was missing," he began, "I told Charlie that if it had been you, I'd be tearing down the city to find you. Like I told him, I was putting myself in his shoes constantly." He sighed a long, deep, shaky sigh. "And if it been you in that hospital bed instead of me, God knows I wouldn't have been able to keep it together. And during that brief time when we thought Amita might have been in that car and might have died, I remember watching Charlie and thinking to myself that if he _had_ to lose someone that I wished it would have been me and not Amita. For pretty selfish reasons, too—I hated being there to watch Charlie go through that. Not to mention I care about Amita—I didn't want to have to deal with losing her, either."

Robin grimaced, fighting back the tears that she knew were coming. "Well personally, I'm really glad it wasn't you."

Don let loose a small smile and ducked as a woman reached near his head to grab a box of fettuccine. He waited until she had left their immediate vicinity to answer.

"Well, it doesn't even matter now," Don assured her. "It turns out it didn't have to be either one of us. Amita and I are both still here."

"Thank God," Robin whispered. That was it; she couldn't keep it together anymore. A choked sob slipped past all her defenses, much to her dismay. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but she felt a pair of arms pull her close. She leaned into Don's chest and cried heavily.

Later, Robin would be glad that she managed to keep her sobs relatively quiet. She and Don stood there for several minutes with her arms wrapped around him, and his arms wrapped around her. Her face was buried in his shoulder as she let loose of everything she felt. Out came her fears of falling too in love with Don to be able to handle losing him. Out came her grief at the prospect of Don not being around anymore. Out came all the sleepless nights she had spent since Don's stabbing just watching him as she slept, grateful that he hadn't gone anywhere. Out came her worries that something like this could happen again.

By no means was Robin free of her fears, but the pressure buildup they were causing inside of her was now released. The dam had exploded, as illustrated by her and Don standing in the supermarket, right in the middle of the pasta aisle in front of anyone who wanted spaghetti for dinner that night. A part of her knew she would find this incredibly embarrassing later, but she couldn't do anything about it right then.

Robin cried for several minutes, clutching Don tight, unwilling to let him go. Finally, once her entire soul had been sobbed out onto Don's shoulder, she stood breathing deeply for another minute before pulling back to look up at him.

Don was gazing at her with love and concern. Looking closer, Robin could see that his eyes were wet and red.

With a small, watery smile, Robin reached up to rub gently at Don's eye. "Oh, Don. You were crying, too."

Don let go of her, pulling away and reaching up to rub at his own eye. He sniffed. "Maybe a little," he admitted gruffly. "I'm so sorry, Robin."

She grabbed his hand with one of hers, and grabbed the shopping cart handle with her other hand. Pulling him forward, they emerged from the pasta aisle before turning down the next.

Finally, Robin found her voice again. "What could you possibly be sorry about?"

Don sighed. "Just . . . you know, for everything I've put you through this past month." Robin thought he looked like he was about to cry again—he was squinting slightly, his mouth in a tight line.

"Oh, Don," she soothed. "Nothing about this is your fault. If anything it's mine, because I love you so much." She mentally slapped herself at the cheesiness of what she'd said. She hated sounding corny.

Now it was Don who was clearly struggling to maintain composure. Robin reached out to him and rubbed his arm vigorously. She pulled him in, pulling his lips to her. The kiss was wet and relatively short; a few seconds and Don was pulling back. She resumed rubbing his arm. _You are so selfish_, she told herself. She hadn't really thought much about how difficult everything that had happened would be on Don.

"Don, it's okay," she kept soothing. "You don't have to hold it in if you don't want."

Don took two deep breaths before responding. "Nah. One breakdown per shopping trip is enough. Let's just pay for this stuff and go home."

Robin thought briefly about Don's current mood compared to his mood when they'd arrived. _Buzz killer_. She'd certainly managed to destroy Don's previous high spirits. She agreed to his request, and they proceeded to the checkout line.

Neither said another word until they were in the parking lot, loading the car with their groceries. Suddenly, Don was gently grabbing her forearm and pulling her in for another kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and they engaged in a much longer, more relaxed kiss. When finally the broke apart, Robin smiled at him.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Don nodded. "Much better. You?"

Robin smiled wider. "So much better. I guess sometimes you just have to lose it in the pasta aisle. Now let's go to Charlie's and then get home and put these groceries away and then do nothing for the rest of the day until we get hungry and decide to cook this food, okay?"

Don grinned slyly. "I sure hope your idea of 'nothing' is the same as _my_ idea of nothing."

Robin laughed. "I'm sure it's similar." She winked at him.

They got in the car, and Robin realized that she really did feel lighter. She didn't have anything to worry about, really. She was doing all she really wanted to do—she was spending the day with the person she loved most. They were alive and healthy, and so were all their friends and family. Things were right with the world, but Robin knew it would take awhile before she and everyone else were able to accept that.

But she was okay with taking her time. Today, she would start by spending the day with her man.

FIN

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